[FoxNews] Nearly two-thirds of all H-1B visas are for computer-related jobs that rely on math skills
When entrepreneur Elon Musk made headlines with his vociferous comments supporting the H-1B visa program, the ensuing debate focused on the implications of his position on immigration.
But this debate obscured the reason America even has such a program in the first place: its homegrown students are being poorly educated in math.
According to federal law, the H-1B program gives visas to foreigners coming to perform services "in a specialty occupation." A specialty occupation is defined as requiring "theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge," plus higher education requirements.
The program is annually capped at 65,000 regular H-1B visas, with another 20,000 for those foreigners who have earned advanced degrees from U.S. universities.
Given Musk’s vehement support of the program, it is no surprise that a federal report states that in 2023, "computer-related occupations were the largest major occupational area, accounting for 65% of all beneficiaries [of the program]." In comparison, less than 1% of H-1B visas were given to foreigners in the social sciences.
While much of the coverage of the H-1B debate focuses on the foreign-versus-American-worker angle, the real issue regarding H-1Bs is that the U.S. is failing to produce domestic workers with the requisite math skills required by Musk’s SpaceX and other high-tech companies.
In 2024, a shocking 72% of eighth-grade students taking the National Assessment of Educational Progress math exam failed to score at the proficient level -- a full 6% increase over the 66% of eighth graders failing to achieve proficiency in 2019.
Why are American students doing so badly in math? The answer lies in the ineffective math instruction they are receiving.
In the early 2010s, most states adopted the Common Core national education standards, which were touted as a cure for America’s math woes. Unfortunately, Common Core turned out to be bad medicine.
Common Core confused many students by emphasizing indirect ways to arrive at the right answer instead of just learning straightforward mathematical operations. For example, in multiplying numbers, children are often asked to draw pictures instead of simply memorizing the multiplication tables.
Michael Malione, a professional math tutor in California, said that his students were instructed by their public schools to draw and shade different areas of rectangles when multiplying fractions, rather than simply multiplying the numerators and multiplying the denominators to get the correct answer. Requiring students to learn math this way is both inefficient and ineffective.
"We’re going to draw a picture every time we’re given 10 problems with fractional multiplication, when you could do them in your head?" Malione asks. "That’s insane."
Malione sees students "who are completely lost and they’re not getting the step-by-step guidance early on."
Given Malione’s experience, it is unsurprising that a federally funded study found that Common Core had significant negative effects on the math achievement of eighth graders.
College math professors are shocked at students’ poor math skills. One college math instructor in the Silicon Valley lamented that the lack of algebra knowledge is "the number one deficiency and its chronic." He said, "we’re not producing the kinds of students and graduates that Silicon Valley needs."
Sugi Sorensen, a top engineer at famed Jet Propulsion Laboratory who also tutors students in math, urged a return to proven traditional math practices, which includes mastering the basic skills of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division through "the memorization of math facts and procedures" so that students "can perform computations quickly, accurately, and effortlessly."
Further, math topics should be sequential, "where new concepts are built upon previously learned ones in a structured, hierarchical manner," Sorensen said.
Finally, Sorensen recommends that math operations such as long division "should be explicitly taught and practiced until mastery," with an emphasis on accuracy.
America has nearly 50 million K-12 students. If schools use proven math instructional methods instead of failed progressive techniques, there would be less need for H-1B visas because there would be more than enough young Americans with the skills companies need. The tech titans at Trump's inauguration should lean on schools to do just that. It is time to make math great again.
#7
I expect Elon will address this issue eventually.
Mathematical maturity takes time. Students have to keep revisiting earlier topics in deeper ways, while learning new things. They were trying to teach abstractions too early, and to the wrong people.
#8
Try raising pay scales to make it worth peoples time.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
02/04/2025 20:06 Comments ||
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#9
They were trying to teach abstractions too early, and to the wrong people.
*Warning - Anecdotal*
When eldest was in 3rd grad, instead of teaching add/subtract tables, the emphasis was on conceptual math, basically Algebra concepts. To 3r graders. I went through College Calculus II, and really enjoyed math, so my kids had a good at-home tutor. Everyone else in the class checked out, so thank you for helping, was the reply to my asking how the classmates were doing.
Common Core, then the Covid Protocols, have absolutely destroyed a generation's math education.
There was even a gag in the movie Incredibles 2 where Dad was trying to help his son with math, "There is no new math, only math!?" I asked mine, "Do you want to learn math, or do you want to learn how to navigate the curriculum?" They chose learn math, and are now head of their class in Math now that they are in conceptual Math such as College Algebra.
In short, they taught math backwards to the point the Elementary School Teachers couldn't teach, only show videos, so when students inevitably had question, the teacher couldn't answer the questions, and IMHO created a disconnect with the students and teachers, turning what were natural Elementary School Teachers into babysitters.
Thanks, Department of Education!
Hey Kansas, just your story, if real. OK, fair in the Age of Internet, let me do proofs: mine can make change and count it back.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Mikhail Kucherov
[REGNUM] 80 years ago, one of the most successful breakthroughs of the Red Army in the Great Patriotic War ended: from January 12 to February 3, troops under the command of Marshals Georgy Zhukov and Ivan Konev liberated almost the entire territory of Poland and part of Czechoslovakia, stopping at a distance of 60-70 kilometers from Berlin.
Although it was supposed to happen a little later: the original plan called for the operation to begin on January 20, 1945. However, at the beginning of the month, the Anglo-American forces were in a desperate situation in the Ardennes. Then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill asked Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to urgently begin an offensive "on the Vistula front or somewhere else" - and the Soviet side agreed to help the Allies.
At 5 a.m. on January 12, the troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front attacked the Germans from the Sandomierz bridgehead, and two days later the Warsaw-Poznan operation began, carried out as part of the larger Vistula-Oder operation. On the front line from the Baltics to Hungary, 2.2 million Soviet and Polish soldiers went on the offensive. 800 thousand Germans tried to hold them back; they prepared seven defensive lines with trenches, minefields and barbed wire between the Vistula and the Oder, stretching for 300-500 kilometers.
The Soviet command expected to cut through the German group “A”, responsible for this area, with two strikes, and one of the main objectives of the operation was the liberation of Warsaw.
Over three days, the Red Army units made several dashes to the routes that deprived the German group of the opportunity to retreat. The Wehrmacht leadership allowed the evacuation of troops to begin: they avoided encirclement. The assault on Warsaw took place on January 16. The main attack was carried out by the forces of the 1st Belorussian Front, which resulted in a breach: the right to enter the city through it was granted to the 1st Army of the Polish Army, commanded by General Stanislav Poplavsky.
On January 17 at 8 am, the 4th Infantry Regiment of the 2nd Polish Division of Jan Rotkiewicz broke through to the center of Warsaw : soon it reached the large central street Marszałkowska. By 3 pm, Soviet troops had arrived, and the city was liberated.
In the Polish capital, the liberators saw a horrific picture. In liquidating the Warsaw Uprising, the Germans had destroyed 84% of the buildings to their foundations, and the ruins had been methodically turned into defense nodes. "The city is dead," Marshal Zhukov briefly described the situation on the spot. In a report submitted to the State Defense Committee, he said:
"The fascist barbarians destroyed the capital of Poland, Warsaw, with the cruelty of sophisticated sadists, the Nazis destroyed block after block. The uprising in Warsaw, provoked by the London Polish government in exile and the leadership of the Home Army in August-September 1944, completed the destruction of the city."
The failed uprising that the marshal writes about lasted from August 1 to October 2, 1944, and was not coordinated with the Soviet command. The Home Army, supported by the Polish government in Britain, sought to proclaim its power and prevent the establishment of communist rule before the Red Army and pro-Soviet Poles entered the city.
However, the plan was unsuccessful, and there was no way to help the rebels - since the autumn of 1944, the Soviet troops were recuperating. Before that, they had made such a rapid 600-kilometer dash that the convoys with ammunition, fuel and food lagged behind them. This was confirmed by the US Ambassador to the USSR William Averell, who noted that the Red Army did not even have pontoons to build bridges.
According to various estimates, after suppressing the uprising, the Germans killed up to 130,000 civilians. And turning Warsaw into a "fortress", the Nazi garrison left thousands of mines in the city. Soviet units had to carry out a large-scale mine-clearing operation. The chief of staff of the 1st Belorussian Front, Colonel General Mikhail Malinin, wrote about it :
“During the demining, 5,412 anti-tank mines, 17,227 anti-personnel mines, 46 land mines, 232 ‘surprises’, over 14 tons of explosives, about 14,000 shells, aerial bombs, mines and grenades were removed, collected and detonated.”
Nevertheless, the liberation of the Polish capital became a significant event for raising the fighting spirit of the attackers. In Moscow, a 24-volley salute of 324 guns was held on this occasion. On June 9, 1945, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR established the medal "For the Liberation of Warsaw". It was awarded to 701,700 people. Stalin personally expressed gratitude to all who took part in those battles. The honorary title of Warsaw was received by 70 units of the Red Army and 12 of the 1st Army of the Polish Army.
The offensive continued relentlessly: on January 19, the troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front entered Krakow. It is generally accepted that they encountered almost no resistance. But in fact, the Germans had been preparing the city for defense since the summer of 1944, and the testimonies of those who took part in those events demonstrate the opposite.
"They say that Krakow, which our division liberated, was captured without a fight. Nothing of the sort, it was simply not heavily destroyed. True, no one bombed it like Leningrad. But the fighting was quite serious," recalls frontline medic Evgeniya Tabachnikova.
At the same time, in Upper Silesia, Soviet units crossed the German border.
On January 23, Bydgoszcz was occupied, and the troops of the 1st Belorussian Front surrounded the Poznan group of Germans. Poznan had to be fought for seriously - there was an old fortress in the city with numerous underground passages: the Germans fortified it with artillery. They installed guns that rolled out of shelters, fired at the Red Army soldiers and drove back.
Veteran Anatoly Beloklokov talks about the unconventional solution that was found to finally occupy this building :
"They would have been messing around with them for a long time until some local Pole suggested: "We need to dig a canal from the river and let them have water there!" Then all forces were immediately raised - troops, Poles. In about a day they dug a trench about 300-400 meters. They let water in there, and the Germans crawled out themselves."
The liberators entered the Poznan fortress after the operation was completed, on February 23: at that time the city was already deep in the rear. The first Soviet units to advance towards the city did not take it and went further. They occupied other industrial centers and Wehrmacht strongholds in Poland – Lodz, Radom, Kielce, Radomsko, Czestochowa, the spiritual capital of Poland.
On February 3, the Red Army reached the Oder and broke through the enemy's defensive lines in the area of Küstrin, the closest of the liberated settlements to Berlin at that time. In 23 days, the Soviet troops covered 500 kilometers, for this reason the operation is also called the "Run to the Oder". The irreparable losses of the attacking side amounted to 43,300 people. It is unknown how many the Wehrmacht lost, but 35 divisions were completely routed, and another 25 lost 50-70% of their personnel.
An interesting detail: Soviet military leaders actively resorted to disorienting the enemy and distracting his attention. Before the start of the operation, mock-ups of tanks and self-propelled guns were placed in the Krakow direction. The day before the offensive, German artillery fired at these dummies at least 200 times, expecting that the offensive would begin there.
Music was also used in preparation for the attack - the sound of compositions from loudspeakers drowned out the engines of tanks and trucks. At the moment the operation began, the USSR anthem began to reach the German trenches.
The German command, which often looked for reasons for the enemy's success in external factors - for example, the onset of severe frosts - admitted defeat. General Friedrich Wilhelm von Mellenthin wrote: "It is impossible to describe everything that happened between the Vistula and the Oder in the first months of 1945. Europe has not known anything like this since the fall of the Roman Empire."
After the capture of Warsaw, Hitler was furious and no longer trusted the generals. He removed all the leaders of Group A from their positions and appointed Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler as the new commander.
Well, for the Soviet side, the strategic significance of the operation also lay in the fact that the rapid advance to Berlin strengthened its position at the Yalta Conference. First of all, on the Polish issue: the formation of the new Polish government arose from the situation “on the ground,” and not from the hysterical position of the “exiles” in London. They were proposed to be considered non-existent, and in general about a quarter of the entire time was devoted to the problem.
At the same time, the scheme for the post-war division of Germany was being decided, and the fact that the leaders of the USSR, Great Britain and the USA had agreed in advance on the capture of the German capital by the Red Army also came from military realities. The Wehrmacht's losses in the Vistula-Oder direction were incomparably greater than those of the Soviet units. And having lost Silesia, Germany lost its industry, which seriously affected even the theoretical faith of the Germans in the possibility of turning the tide of events.
#1
Side note: Hitler moved all his critical reserve units to strike in Belgium, aka the Battle of Bulge, just the month before who were thus unavailable to bolster the Eastern Front.
[DailyCaller] In case you missed it, U.S. Defense Department employees connected their work computers to Chinese servers to access DeepSeek’s new AI chatbot, sparking concerns over national security risks regarding China.
These Pentagon employees spent two days on the new Chinese chatbot before the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) shut off access late Tuesday, according to Bloomberg. DISA is essentially the U.S. Department of Defense’s IT department. It maintains and secures communications capabilities "from the battlefield to the White House."
DeepSeek became a global phenomenon over the weekend when the chatbot went live in U.S. app stores, quickly becoming the top free app in the Apple App Store. Because of this, Americans watched as tech stocks lost billions on Monday due to its arrival, creating even greater fears that China has already leapfrogged U.S. dominance in AI development.
However,
some people cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go... there is an even more sinister issue here. DeepSeek’s privacy policy admits that the AI chatbot not only stores user data on servers in China but also controls that information under Chinese law. It doesn’t take a Silicon Valley elite to understand the national security risks at play when Defense Department employees connect their government computers to China’s new tech.
If the federal government, which bloviates about security issues regarding TikTok, truly believed that there is a grave national security issue regarding China. Why wasn’t protection already in place to prevent this from happening? To make matters worse, Bloomberg reported that this wasn’t a one-time occurrence lasting two days. Federal employees have been accessing DeepSeek for months.
"US military personnel started downloading an earlier release of DeepSeek code on their workstations in the fall of 2024, according to the person familiar with the matter. At the time, the downloads didn’t raise concern with Defense Department security teams as the connection to China wasn’t clear to them, the person added," the outlet reported.
Doesn’t allowing federal employees access to Chinese technology fly in the face of protecting our national security and winning the race to technological supremacy? There should be an inherent warning signal that explodes in the minds of anyone who works in government that using Chinese apps (no matter the offered service) is a terrible idea.
What do they mean by "the connection to China wasn’t clear to" Biden officials? It has never been hidden that DeepSeek was created in China. All it took was a quick search of its origins to discover that one of our national enemies controlled the app.
Americans have no idea which U.S. Military or Pentagon personnel accessed DeepSeek or their security levels.
The best-case scenario is that they were low-level employees with little to no clearance. At worst, high-ranking officials just gave China months to snoop around in our systems.
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/04/2025 9:08 Comments ||
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#5
My last two companies locked down all personal computers. The pj's were not able to download apps or connect to external drives without an administrator password.
Amazed that pentagon staffers could.
Posted by: Ed ||
02/04/2025 10:10 Comments ||
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#6
The best-case scenario is that they were low-level employees with little to no clearance.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[ColonelCassad] Scary, very scary. The Trump administration has reached USAID.
1. Funding for the organization has been suspended. Purges have begun within the structure itself.
2. Some of the online resources are down. Grant eaters around the world who received money through USAID are worried.
3. The organization is accused of misappropriating funds, financing extremism and terrorism, and supporting regime change.
4. Plans are being announced to reduce funding, change the format of its activities, and restructure after direct subordination to the State Department.
5. For a long time, USAID was one of the tools of the CIA and the State Department to overthrow inconvenient regimes and promote the influence of globalists.
In terms of significance, this is the same as the closure of the Comintern in the USSR.
Elon Musk said that in the previous video, the USAID agency will not be restored and it will cease to exist. What will be subordinate to the State Department will be some other organization. Annual expenses for USAID activities reached several tens of billions per year. In terms of significance, this is the same as the closure of the Comintern in the USSR.
The entire USAID leadership was dismissed. They tried to prevent the decision to close the agency. Democrats are going to appeal the closure of USAID in court, pointing to Trump and Musk exceeding their authority, since USAID was closed without approval from Congress, where this decision would certainly not have passed. In fact, Trump and Musk are accused of voluntarism.
This is how one of the important tools for organizing color revolutions in different regions of the world was routinely liquidated. This organization was also involved in the coups in Ukraine in 2004 and 2014. In Russia, it has long been listed as an undesirable organization.
Of course, this does not mean that the US will stop overthrowing regimes in other countries, it will simply now be carried out in slightly different organizational forms, behind which the CIA and the State Department will hide as usual.
More from regnum.ru Zakharova said that USAID forced the media to hush up the crimes of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) forced the media to ignore the crimes of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), including the attack on the boarding school in Sudzha, Kursk region. This was stated on February 3 by the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova.
She reported manipulation of public opinion by USAID, citing a leaked document from February 2021 called the “Disinformation Primer,” which spoke of “strategic silence” when such situations arise.
"By this, USAID understands the coordinated, on the order of the sponsor of such "pocket" media outlets, ignoring those inconvenient stories, facts and opinions that do not fit into the version of events approved in Washington. A strike on Sudzha? What is Sudzha? Russian Porechnoye? There was no Porechnoye," Zakharova said in a statement on her Telegram channel.
She noted that the media also did the same in the case of the staged mass murders in Bucha in March 2022, the bombing of the Nord Stream pipeline in September of the same year, and statements about illegitimate elections, including in Belarus.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, on February 1, Ukrainian forces attacked a nursing home in the city of Sudzha in the Kursk region. The Ukrainian Armed Forces launched missiles from the territory of the Sumy region. The Russian Defense Ministry noted that the attack on a civilian facility once again demonstrated the terrorist and inhuman nature of the Kiev regime.
In addition, the Human Rights Commissioner of the Russian Federation Tatyana Moskalkova demanded that the UN, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Council of Europe condemn the missile strike on the boarding school in the city of Sudzha. She emphasized that the attack on a civilian facility where civilians are located is a crime that cannot be forgotten and forgiven.
According to the Telegram channel "Dnevnik Mrakobortsev", there could have been 94 civilians under the rubble that formed after the attack, who did not have time to evacuate from Sudzha. Also, according to some reports, the Ukrainian Armed Forces held civilian prisoners inside, including elderly people. The Investigative Committee opened a criminal case under the article on a terrorist attack.
Even more from regnum.ru The US has announced Trump's plans to merge USAID with the State Department
The administration of US President Donald Trump plans to reduce the staff of the Agency for International Development (USAID) and merge it with the State Department. This was reported on February 3 by the CBS television channel,citing sources.
According to the channel, USAID will continue to act as the structure responsible for humanitarian aid.
It is noted that discussions on a possible reduction in funding for the agency are ongoing.
As reported by Regnum News Agency, on February 3, CNN reported that employees of USAID headquarters received emails about the closure of the office in Washington.
On February 2, Trump said that USAID was run by “radical lunatics” who needed to be removed. A decision would then be made on USAID’s future work, he added.
American businessman Elon Musk called USAID a criminal organization for which it was time to die. He also accused the agency of funding biological weapons development at the expense of American taxpayers. Musk later announced the beginning of the liquidation of USAID. As of today, it is no longer subject to restoration, he noted.
[PJMedia] Donald Trump ...dictatorial for repealing some (but not all) of the diktats of his predecessor, misogynistic because he likes pretty girls, homophobic because he doesn't think gender bending should be mandatory, truly a man for all seasons... ’s latest shock move against the Deep State was suddenly to shut down the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). And all those who oppose Islamic Jihad ...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah... should celebrate this move, considering the many millions of American taxpayer dollars the agency has funneled to genocidal jihadis.
Yes, that’s right, the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... subsidiary of USAID has sent literally billions of our hard-earned taxpayer dollars to Hamas ..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,... -run Gaza, where the overwhelming majority of Gazooks support jihad. The Biden-Harris administration has been especially generous with USAID Gaza funding, of course; thank goodness Trump is taking action to end the cash flow to corrupt foreign countries.
In the U.S. Office of Paleostinian Affairs’ announcement of $230 million in new funding for Gazooks late last year, the Office bragged, "Since 2021, USAID/West Bank and Gaza has invested over $600 million in economic support funding of the Paleostinian people, in addition to the over $1.2 billion in humanitarian assistance since October 7, 2023." USAID/West Bank and Gaza is of course a subsidiary of the larger agency.
Amy Tohill-Stull, the mission director for USAID/West Bank and Gaza, inaccurately referred to the Paleostinian people (the so-called Paleostinians are actually a conglomeration of Arabs who began using the term Paleostinian in the 1960s) in her nauseating statement at the time. "Our commitment to the Paleostinian people remains steadfast," she pontificated.
She added that the agency aimed to reduce Hamas's influence, even though the majority of Paleostinians are still stubbornly and enthusiastically in support of terrorism and show no signs of abandoning their violent mostly peaceful ideology: "This funding demonstrates our resolve to support sustainable development and provide essential services that enhance the quality of life for all Paleostinians and further reduce the influence of Hamas." I give that at least three Pinnochios.
Incidentally, soon after the above release, USAID again announced "seven new programs to foster peace between Paleostinians and Israelis." It is unclear from that November announcement exactly how much money was involved with this incredibly vaguely described initiative, but the Nita M. Lowey Middle East Partnership for Peace Act under which the programs came allocates $50 million a year for various programs. The programs include 29 awards altogether for Paleostinian-related initiatives.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee posted today, "USAID is a mess. For every dollar it spends, only 12 cents actually reach those in need—the rest gets wasted or pocketed in the Beltway. It’s time to fix our foreign aid system." Amen to that.
More from PJ Media about USAID money going to various jihadi groups, discussing the work of former CIA targeter and Defense Department operative Sarah Adams. She tells of millions per week handed to the Taliban, some of which flows to Al Qaeda training camps, which send graduates through the Darien Gap to the US. Yay. That nothing major has happened in the U.S since 9/11 arguably demonstrates God’s love for America.
#3
Saw protests on TV today. The crowd was protesting the the cut back in USAID funding. They had shut down a major highway around LA. You'd think they had better things to do considering the recent major fires which wiped out so many homes. I wondered how many of the protesters knew what USAID even was. Looked like a seedier version of earlier Soros protests rent-a-crowds.
[IsraelTimes] As a British-Israeli of Iranian descent and outspoken critic of Tehran, I live in fear of reprisals by the IRGC and its proxies
Daniel Khalife has been sentenced to 14 years after being found guilty of spying for Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... in November 2024. Khalife was also convicted of committing an act prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state, while also eliciting information about members of the armed forces. The former British Army soldier had effectively recruited himself as an agent for Iran, proactively identifying and contacting a sanctioned Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-linked individual who then transferred him to what was described as an "English-speaking handler" in 2019.
Khalife’s defense hinged on his claim that he was simply motivated by a desire to serve the UK’s intelligence agencies and was acting as an unsanctioned double agent, only providing his handlers in Tehran with what he viewed as insignificant information. He forged documents and his fictional reports recklessly endangered Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian national imprisoned at the time in Iran on (dubious?) (bogus / trumped up?) spying charges. Khalife even contacted the Security Service twice to offer them his services before they reported him to the police, leading to his first arrest in January 2022. Khalife displayed such incompetence that even his own barrister likened his activities to those of "Scooby Doo" rather than 007.
Yet, these revelations are of secondary importance to what the Khalife trial shows about Iran, and unquestionably reinforce how Tehran is a major, but surprisingly overlooked threat to British national security. Iran has spent years dedicating significant resources to subverting, radicalizing, and attempting acts of terrorism against British interests both domestically and internationally. This nefarious influence can no longer be ignored, and significant action from His Majesty’s Government is long overdue. While attention has rightly been directed towards Russia and China, we must also wake up to the Iranian threat and treat it with the seriousness it deserves. The recently concluded trial signaled Iran’s intentions towards the UK, despite Khalife’s naivety and incompetence.
When given the chance to infiltrate the UK’s armed forces, Tehran seized the opportunity. During his attempted espionage, Khalife collected the names of United Kingdom Special Forces operators, asked his handlers what regiments they were particularly interested in, and took a series of screenshots of systems marked "Secret," including a password record sheet. Interestingly, an expert report for the defense from Dr. Frank Ledwidge, a senior lecturer in War Studies and former naval intelligence officer, argues that any information Khalife provided could only have been of "limited utility to an enemy state" due to its outdated and publicly available nature. Dr. Ledwidge also noted that even the list of special forces operators would not be of use because "the primary targets of Iranians are dissidents and Israelis."
I find Dr. Ledwidge’s comments to the court nothing short of chilling. As a British-Israeli of Iranian descent in the UK and outspoken critic of the regime in Tehran, I, along with many friends, live in fear of reprisals by the IRGC and its proxies. In February 2023 it was revealed that MI5 and the Home Office police had foiled 15 plots by Iran to either kidnap or kill British or UK-based individuals it considers "enemies of the regime." This number has since risen to twenty, and in December 2023 Magomed-Husejn Dovtaev was tossed in the clink Youse'll never take me alive coppers!... [BANG!]... Ow!... I quit! for attempting to collect information useful for terrorism after being caught surveilling Iran International’s Chiswick studios. In March 2024, the Iran International journalist, Pouria Zeraati, was stabbed by two men outside his London home and only narrowly survived. He has now fled to Israel, citing the government’s failure to proscribe the IRGC as a key factor behind his decision.
In May 2024, four people were maimed after "festivities" at a memorial ceremony being held for the Iranian President in Wembley after his death in a helicopter crash. These "festivities" were in fact anti-regime protestors being assaulted by supporters of the Islamic Theocratic Republic. Ellie Borhan, one of those assaulted, was injured so badly she was hospitalized. Her phone was lost in the scuffle and later turned on in the Iranian Embassy ...You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy!... at Princes Gate in Kensington. In September 2024, GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre also warned that hackers working on behalf of the IRGC were targeting "individuals with a nexus to Iranian and Middle Eastern affairs, such as current and former senior government officials, senior think tank personnel, journalists, activists and lobbyists" as part of a phishing campaign.
In recent months, Israel has also arrested and charged dozens of alleged Iranian agents accused of subversion, tracking nuclear scientists, taking photos of Mosssd ...... ’s headquarters, providing maps of the Golani Brigade’s training base where over 60 were maimed and four killed in a dronezap in October, and attempted to assassinate the Prime Minister or Defense Minister. It is also alleged that members of one ring were debriefed on missile impacts after April 2024’s unprecedented direct Iranian attack on Israel to improve the accuracy on future targeting. The majority of these agents were Jewish Israelis, many from Azerbaijan, which sits on Iran’s northern border. It is believed that Iranian intelligence is operating inside Azerbaijan and targeting its Jewish community, identifying and then recruiting potential agents willing to spy on Israel.
Iran’s activities extend to the US as well. In September, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated and sanctioned seven individuals as part of a coordinated US government response to Iran’s operations that sought to influence or interfere in the 2024 and 2020 presidential elections. In November, the Department of Justice "charged an asset of the Iranian regime who was tasked by the regime to direct a network of criminal associates to further Iran’s liquidation plots against its targets, including President-elect Donald Trump ...The man who was so stupid he beat fourteen professional politicians, a former tech CEO, and a brain surgeon for the Republican nomination in 2016, then beat The Smartest Woman in the World in the general election. Then he beat Kamala while dodging bullets... ." In 2019, an indictment against Monica Witt was made six years after her defection to Iran. A former US Air Force counterintelligence specialist and defense contractor, she was also closely linked with a prominent US-born Press TV journalist, Marzieh Hashemi.
These events underscore that we cannot afford to maintain the status quo on Iran and the threats it poses to UK national security. Despite the well-intentioned efforts of the FCDO and Treasury, their sanctions have had little deterring effect on Tehran which now appears ever more brazen. Proscription of the IRGC is long overdue and would be a welcome starting point. Additionally, the Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) should be banned given its role in assassinating and abducting regime opponents around the world. The UK government must deliver on its manifesto pledge "to take the approach used for dealing with non-state terrorism ... any action taken by a non-Moslem state that constrains the violent impulses of Moslems or their allies ... and adapt it to deal with statebased domestic security threats." Now is not the time to slumber or sleep and where the Conservatives fell short on national security, Labour can succeed by taking meaningful attempts to safeguard the UK and the international community against Iran’s threats.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...
......
